Outbreak of Infections Kills 10 in Germany

Monday

May 30, 2011 at 5:09 AM

The infection, from a strain of Escherichia coli, has 400 reported cases but health officials have not determined the source.

JUDY DEMPSEY

BERLIN — With 10 people dead of infection and 400 cases reported, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said Sunday that a bacterial outbreak in northern Germany was one of the largest of its kind ever reported worldwide.

The infection, from a strain of Escherichia coli, can lead to kidney failure and death and is difficult to treat with antibiotics, according to the Robert Koch Institute, which is Germany’s disease control authority.

Fifteen other cases have been identified in Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. The patients are German or had visited northern Germany. Agriculture ministers from the European Union are scheduled to discuss the issue Monday when they meet in Debrecen, Hungary.

Food safety officials in Austria and the Czech Republic said Sunday that small numbers of vegetables that had come from Germany were being pulled off the shelves there, The Associated Press reported.

The Czechs said cucumbers from a contaminated shipment had also gone to Hungary and Luxembourg.

The infections came from eating raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce that were bought in northern Germany. The symptoms include bloody diarrhea and stomach cramps. In most cases, patients recover after about eight days.

Scientists at the Institute for Hygiene and Environment in Hamburg, northern Germany’s major port city and one of Europe’s largest cargo terminals, suggested that the bacteria could have come from Spain.

The Hamburg health minister, Cornelia Prüfer, said three out of four cucumbers carrying the strain of the bacteria were from a shipment from Spain that had been sold in supermarkets in Hamburg.

The Robert Koch Institute issued a warning against eating such vegetables.

“As long as the experts in Germany and Spain have not found the definitive source of the bacteria, we have to stick with our warnings against raw vegetables,” the federal consumer protection minister, Ilse Aigner, said Sunday in an interview with Bild am Sonntag.

The European disease center, however, said an alternative food item could be the carrier of the infection. “The definite source of the infection remains to be confirmed,” it said. There have been no reported cases of infection in Spain.

The bacterium in question, Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, or STEC, can cause severe enteric and systemic disease in humans, including hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, which can lead to kidney failure or death.

“To date, this outbreak is one of the largest described outbreaks of STEC/HUS worldwide and the largest ever reported in Germany,” said the European disease center, which is based in Stockholm.

The infection usually occurs through contaminated food or water, unwashed vegetables and contact with animals. Person-to-person transmission is also possible through the close contact that can occur within families, child care centers and nursing homes, according to the Koch Institute.

The European disease center said milder E. coli outbreaks had been linked to unpasteurized milk and cheese and undercooked beef as well as a variety of fresh produce, including sprouts, spinach and lettuce.

The first cases in the latest outbreak were reported three weeks ago in Hamburg.

On Friday, the European Commission said that two Spanish farms in Málaga and Almería had been shut down after German experts identified Spanish cucumbers as the source of the E. coli bacteria.

The Spanish authorities denied over the weekend that the two farms had been closed temporarily.

The regional health ministry in Andalusia said that water, soil and cucumber samples from the farms were being analyzed. The produce continues to be exported.